MY DEAR SWEET mother used to say that if Thomas Edison
hadn't invented the light bulb, we'd all be watching TV by candlelight.
Of course, she said it in Italian, so it was much funnier.

The effects of technology on the way we live--indeed, on who
we are--are both staggering and subtle. It seems that something
new and amazing comes along every day. Our reaction generally
follows the pattern of stare in wild wonder, try to determine
what impact (if any) it will have on our lives, then assimilate
it along with all the rest of the gizmos and gadgets.

To compare our modern life with that of people just one century
ago is to present a contrast so stark as to be farcical. Technology
has had a profound effect on how we work and how we play; on how
we travel and what we call home; on how we live and how we die.
Yet, some would argue--some quite forcefully in this lively book--that
technology has not made our lives better, just more technological.

Visions of Technology, Richard Rhodes' fascinating new
book, is a compilation of essays and anecdotes on technology in
the 20th century, with writings from a wildly diverse group including
George Orwell, Joan Didion, engineer-turned-politician Herbert
Hoover and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Written over the length of the
20th century, some are mildly prescient, others quite visionary,
while some are absolutely hilarious clunkers.

Many are only one paragraph long while others are full essays,
but each has a purpose as Rhodes guides the reader through the
maze of what technology is, what it should be, and what it might
become. There is the dread-filled "Beneficial Inventions
and Diabolical Purposes" by none other than Orville Wright;
the foreboding "Atomic Morality" by FDR and Truman crony
Vannevar Bush; and the straight-faced "The Insidious Dangers
of Radio Advertising."

Rhodes is probably best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning
The Making of the Atomic Bomb, an 800-page masterpiece
tracing the history of physics from the discovery of radiation
through the dropping of the atom bomb on Nagasaki. Researched
to perfection, it somehow manages to read like a novel, and is
far and away my favorite non-fiction book ever.

He followed that up with the spectacular Dark Sun: The Making
of the Hydrogen Bomb, a sort-of Godfather, Part II
to the original Godfather. Equally well-done, the sequel
focuses on the narrow period after World War II, during which
the U.S. raced to develop the hydrogen bomb, while trying in vain
to keep the atomic bomb away from the Soviets. Full of espionage
and scientific shenanigans, Dark Sun somehow managed to
not win the Pulitzer, even though it was every bit as good as
the original.

More recently, Rhodes delivered Deadly Feasts, a chilling
look at the links between Polynesian cannibalism, English Mad
Cow Disease, and the sheep disease called "scrapie."
It wasn't enough to make me stop eating hamburgers, unfortunately,
but I chew them more slowly now.

In the forward to Visions, Rhodes explains that since
the Industrial Revolution, technology has always been at loggerheads
with intellectualism. According to Rhodes, "The (wealthy)
landed classes resisted the technological revolution, since it
threatened their predominantly agricultural interests. The new
industrialists emerged from the craft and working classes. The
landed classes neglected technical education, taking refuge in
classical studies. Intellectuals neglect technical education to
this day."

Harsh stuff, but clearly backed up by both intellectuals and
technologists throughout this book. Rhodes, clearly a technologist,
concludes that the intellectual bias against technology "derives
in some measure to technical and scientific illiteracy as well
as jealousy and competition for influence."

But he is equally hard on the common practice of technologists
plunging ahead to make the Next Big Thing while "excusing
themselves from moral responsibility for weapons of mass destruction,
pollution and other well-known horrors."

As for the book itself, Rhodes has done a wonderful job of selecting
the works and placing them in an order that keeps the reader delightfully
jumping along from one to the next. There is whimsy, as witnessed
by Gene Shalit (of all people) recalling a University of California
engineering student cheer back in the pre-calculator days of the
slide rule:

E to the X, dy! dx!

E to the X, dx!

Secant, cosine, tangent, sine,

Three-point-one-four-one-five-nine;

Square root, cube root, Q.E.D.,

Slip stick! Slide rule!

'ray, U.C.!

And there is rich history, as when Rhodes explains that in 1930,
long after Ernest Rutherford had discovered the atomic nucleus
and was busy transmuting elements at Cambridge, the physics lab
at Oxford had still not been wired for electricity.

Probably the best piece in the book is "Appropriations,"
by George Dyson (son of Nobel Prize-winner Freeman Dyson, who
shared the prize with brilliant super-wacko Richard Feynman).
George Dyson explores the invention of ENIAC, the world's first
computer, noting that like many important inventions, it was first
developed for military purposes, and then later adapted for other
uses.

There is much to like in this book, and it will bring forth a
lot of emotions. Take, for example, the incredibly wrong statement
made by Lewis L. Strauss in 1954: The then-head of the U.S. Atomic
Energy Commission foresaw a utopian future powered by nuclear
energy. Said Strauss, "It is not too much to expect that
our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap
to meter...."